A PLANNED inter-oceanic canal connecting the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean will dwarf the Panama Canal and be one of the largest infrastructure projects ever built in Latin America - if it is ever built.A Hong Kong-based consortium, the Hong Kong Nicaragua Development Group (HKND), was granted a 100-year concession by Nicaragua’s National Assembly in June 2013 to build the waterway, a dry canal, two airports, a pipeline, and a railway. The estimated cost is around US$40 billion.Advocates of the plan, which include Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega, say it will bring prosperity to Nicaragua and transform global shipping.But the plan is mired in controversy.The opposition has decried it as a speculative profit-grabbing exercise by President Ortega, his network of party and business associates, and the chairman of the HKND Group, Wang Jing.Protesters warned of environmental and social disasters if the project were to proceed.Indications are that the canal would require an 80 kilometre trench much of it across the vast Lake Nicaragua, Central America's largest freshwater reserve, which is at most 13 metres deep.The eagerness of President Ortega and his party to give a little-known Chinese consortium the rights to proceed with the largest infrastructure project in Latin America’s history without any public consultation, has been condemned .Observers from the business world question the ability of Mr Wang, 40, to raise the international capital required. His HKND group is only a few months old and registered in the Cayman Islands.